Alaska Pride is a political blog dealing with issues of particular interest to Alaskans and those interested in Alaska. As Alaska's most politically incorrect blog, Alaska Pride addresses multiple issues ranging from politics, the environment, religion, and even race. I also seek to educate Outsiders about the real Alaska - why we cost more, and why it's a worthwhile investment for America.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

On August 25th, 2008, the Anchorage Daily News published a story by Beth Bragg entitled "Alaskans bring home Beijing bling", in which she describes the efforts of three Olympic athletes who either live in or grew up in Alaska. In the opening line of article, she uses the term "bling" a second time to describe their Olympic medals. I have a problem with this, but more on this issue later.

First, the three Alaska athletes who competed in the Games and left with a medal include Carlos Boozer, Matt Emmons, and Corey Cogdell:

• Carlos Boozer of Juneau, who played high school ball at Juneau-Douglas High School, helped the U.S. men's basketball team reclaim its status as the best basketball nation on the planet. A star for the Utah Jazz but a role player for Team USA, he only played one minute in Saturday night's (Aug. 23) gold-medal win over Spain -- but he savored the victory as much as anyone in uniform. Boozer, the leading scorer on the Utah Jazz, is slowly growing into the role once filled by Karl Malone. Coverage from the Utah end provided by KSL Channel 5 in Salt Lake.

• Matt Emmons, a former star for the UAF rifle team who still lists Fairbanks as his home town, took silver in the 50-meter prone rifle competition. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner coverage of Emmons HERE.

• Corey Cogdell, an Eagle River woman, captured a bronze medal in women's trapshooting, and then regaled members of the international media with tales of moose hunting in Alaska. Cogdell, who turns 22 next week, is a lifelong Alaskan and still lives here year round. She was shooting tin cans and spruce hen at the family home in Chickaloon as a preschooler, and in 2004, she became the first woman and the first junior-division shooter to win the all-around championship at the state trapshooting championship, according to Dave Kaiser, who coached her when she was learning the sport at the Birchwood shooting range in Chugiak. Cogdell also received several writeups in the August issue of Field & Stream, HERE and HERE and was the subject of an August 14th report in the Alaska Star, which serves Eagle River.

Beth Bragg then wraps up the article with a short interview with Corey Cogdell. Cogdell plans on returning to Alaska in October. Bragg is a longtime reporter with the Anchorage Daily News who was tried out as a replacement for the highly-touted columnist Mike Doogan. Apparently Bragg never gained any real traction as a columnist, although she seems like a competent journalist.

While the term "bling" has become commonplace through popular culture, it is completely inappropriate and even marginally offensive to refer to an Olympic medal as "bling". While nobody has ever actually earned "bling", Olympic athletes earn their medals through the investment of thousands of hours of hard training and copious sweat. And many of those hours of training can involve rehabilitation from injury or medical anomalies as discussed in this previous post about Kikkan Randall.

This illustrates another downside of multiculturalism. While multiculturalism procalims "cultural equality", which itself is spurious, in actuality, multiculturalism actually promotes the LOWEST common cultural denominator. The worst part of multiculturalism is the promotion of hip-hop, which has proved to be a singularly destructive culture promoting lifestyles which have left 70 percent of African-American children without a father in residence at home. It also promotes misogynistic attitudes toward women and law enforcement, and also advocates anti-white hatred. Many of the black-on-white mob assaults occurring nationwide are fueled and celebrated by hip-hop culture; you can review some sample hip-hop lyrics on the MartinLutherKing.org website to better understand the provocative effect of hip-hop.

And "bling" is a part of this hip-hop mentality. To put a "grill" that some idiotic ghetto bonehead applies to his teeth on the same level as a hard-won Olympic medal is extremely disrespectful. While Beth Bragg obviously had no intent to deliberately disrespect our athletes, the effect is the same nonetheless.

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It's time for Americans to take America back! America has been in the hands of special interests too long. Sometimes it's necessary to set aside the labels; while I prefer the conservative solution, sometimes you gotta go to the left. Sometimes capitalism requires an occasional daub of socialism to smooth its sharper edges.